If you're like me and often use Ctrl+Shift+U to enter special characters (like Ctrl+Shift+U 2014 to enter —), you may have occasionally accidentally gotten the timing wrong and pressed Ctrl+U+Shift instead (pressing the U while holding Ctrl but just before pressing Shift).
(For me, it's even easier to fat finger since I usually press all 3 of those keys with my left hand (I use Dvorak) so that I can leave my right hand on their home keys.)
But if you make this mistake while in Insert mode, you can inadvertently and permanently lose an entire line of input—without any way to get it back. Wait, wat!?
(Ctrl+U "Deletes all entered characters before the cursor in the current line." See :help i_CTRL-U or this question)
Pressing Esc U does not undo this deletion, like it would if I had deleted the line with dd. (Even pressing Ctrl+O U without leaving insert mode does not work).
Needless to say, if you've just spent several minutes or an hour composing a really long paragraph (which will be considered a single line if you haven't inserted any line breaks) without leaving Insert mode, it can be very disheartening and disconcerting to vainly press u, expecting to get your line back but having it instead revert back to an even earlier undo state! The confidence you've placed in your trusty editor, vim, suddenly gets dashed to pieces as you dolefully realize that you now have to try to remember what you just wrote and compose it all over again.
I can think of a few workarounds to try to make editing safer, like trying to remember to exit insert mode frequently so that a new undo block is created (see :help undo-blocks)...
But I shouldn't have to tread so carefully when composing something. I should be able to stay in the flow (that is, keep composing without leaving Insert mode) as long as the words keep flowing. (And it's probably safe to say that most editors don't have this problem. In most editors, Undo would undo your changes one character at a time since they don't have any way to group multiple characters together as a single "insert").
Since I probably won't remember to be so careful, I ended up simply disabling use of Ctrl-U altogether in Insert mode, for now, with this:
imap <C-U> <Nop>
But what I'd like to know is if there's any decent way to make Ctrl-U still work in case I ever want to use it, but create an undo state so that this deletion can be easily undone with U. Is this possible? (And why isn't this the default behavior?)
Related
If I write an if statement in my C program, press enter three times, then write a comment, the below is my output. Notice the two lines between the condition and the comment are completely empty.
if(my_condition) {
<Tab>// My comment here
My issue is that Vim does not insert any tab character(s) between the beginning of the line and the cursor position until a character is typed. This is very annoying for me, because I like to move my cursor up and down the block of code often. Since there isn't a real tab on the two lines, if I moved up one line my cursor would go to the beginning of the line, instead of staying on the same column. I come from Sublime Text and other editors where this has never been a problem.
Is there a plugin or setting such that I can accomplish the following?
if(my_condition) {
<Tab>
<Tab>
<Tab>// My comment here
All help is appreciated. I've looked into using Visual mode, but have had undesirable side effects of enabling it all the time. Certainly there is a simple way to automatically add the tabs when I make a new line?
This is very annoying for me, because I like to move my cursor up and down the block of code often.
Well, as you might have noticed, switching to vim means that you need to change your own editing behavior. And that might be the toughest, more than learning the new commands, because habits die hard!
I'm not saying that you should stop scrolling around your function in an useless manner, though, but that you should stop moving around with the "cursor" keys in insert mode.
When you're doing movements when in insert mode it has the side effect you're exposing as "inconvenient", but it also has the side effect of breaking the "repeat" command (.). After a cursor movement in insert mode, a . will only repeat characters typed after that movement.
So, what you should consider in your editing behavior, is to avoid empty lines, avoid trailing spaces/tabs and never move around in insert mode. Insert mode is for insertion, and the normal mode is for moving around and doing actions on the text.
There are a lot of move commands you can abuse in normal mode (j/k, <C-e>/<C-y>, {/}, …).
That being said, if you get yourself in a situation where you've fscked the indentation, you might want to keep on editing, not caring about the indent, and once you're back in normal mode issue a =i{ that will indent everything within the block following the syntax file (and your indent settings).
I've read this question, but it doesn't answer the issue I have.
So I have F2 button mapped to save changes. Escape is for leaving insert mode. So to save changes I hit escape and then press F2 (usually several times - to make sure I really hit it :) ). And I can't even figure out how this happens, that I hit some button (probably Escape) at some moment, that it closes vim with all my open tabs and buffers, as everything is usually saved. This happened to me so many times, that I finally decided to post a question.
How to prevent exiting Vim, regadless of the way or reason (:q, triple Escape, etc) it's going to quit, so that I couldn't exit from it without confirmation?
To your case: It is strange that triple Escape quits VIM that is not standard behavior. Even :q would not quite all tabs. You can check what is mapped on your Escape:
:verbose map <Esc>
There must be something like qa!.
When I'm in VIM insert mode, it wonderfully adds matching end characters. E.g. if I type " it will add another " immediately after the cursor. Similarly for parenthesis, braces etc. when programming.
How can I quickly skip over the inserted character, while staying in insert mode? The best I've found is to use the forward arrow key, but that's not conveniently located.
Accordingly, I either type the closing character, or I <esc>li (exit insert mode, move right one character, re-enter insert mode). This reduces the convenience of the auto-insertion quite dramatically, so I figure I'm missing something obvious.
(Note, for convenience I'm using the handy SPF13 curated collection of plugins and running MacVIM. Edit: This is the autoclose script providing the matching.)
There's basically no way to get out of an autoclosed pair that doesn't involve pressing at least one key.
The standard mechanism provided by all the autoclosing plugins is simple: type the closing character. You can also press <Right> or, if you are at the end of the line, <End>.
Maybe your plugin gives you another mechanism but you'll have to find out for yourself.
Whatever key you press, you'll still do at the very least exactly the same amount of typing as you'd do without autoclosing.
Autoclosing is not about saving typing, the only practical use of that feature is to prevent unmatched pairs. That's all and, I think, the "obvious" thing you are missing.
As you are using a SPF13 and don't know which plugins brought the mapping. There are two things that we can do
1) I usually esc followed by A. This will kept you in insert mode after the closed character if it is the last character. I usually prefer this over the second one.
2) You can circumvent the automatic closing by ctrl - v before the character, for instance ". This will not autoclose the corresponding character and you are responsible for the closing.
I use MacVim (and gvim) a lot. I'm familiar with and use a lot of the basic movement commands (b, w, $, 0, G). However, for a lot of things—such as selecting particular lines on the screen or jumping to a particular column in a different line—I use the mouse (sometimes in concert with my left hand on the keyboard). It also helps that my mouse has a scroll wheel and buttons for changing tabs.
I also need to admit... I use the arrow keys on my keyboard rather than hjkl.
I think that my speed (and posture at the computer) will be improved by not having to escape from insert mode, and from keeping both hands on the main part of the keyboard.
What convinced you to abandon the mouse? What are the most helpful shortcuts for moving quickly between lines and columns, scrolling, etc.?
This question is inspired by this recent post
I think that my speed (and posture at
the computer) will be improved by not
having to escape from insert mode
No, you must escape from insert mode right after you typed what you want. It quickly becomes a reflex, so you don't really lose time (I sometimes even press escape after completing a web form...). Normal mode isn't just for moving around, it's used to perform most operations (save from typing): for instance deleting or moving sections of text. You also benefit from entering insert mode with the appropriate key: o to start a line, S to replace a line (while keeping indentation), A to move to the end of the line, c+motion to replace a few words or until a given character... All of these save keystrokes.
The mouse seems fast, but in reality it isn't precise, so you lose time (in addition to the constant back and forth with the keyboard). ViM has a long list of moving commands (see :help usr_03) which, when mastered, are faster than the mouse in most situations.
Use search the most you can (/, ?, *, #, f, t...). I personally use Ctrl+(d,u,f,b) a lot. Also, Ctrl+(o, i) and `` are really useful to go back where you were before a search or something else.
h, j, k, l are there to place your right hand near to useful commands (i, u, o...): I always have my fingers on them. The arrows force you to move your hand a lot.
Try to look at a few commands in :help, then use them a lot, and you'll get habits about what you should use to move according to the situation. Nobody uses ViM the same way.
The more I used the keyboard movement in vim, the less I wanted to use the mouse. It doesn't help that extended periods of time where I'm constantly moving from keyboard to mouse can take a toll on my wrist.
If you want to force doing things the vim way, unplug your mouse for a while! The more you use the keyboard, the more you will love it. This worked for me.
For moving between lines, I usually just use jk but I often skip to lines using :line_num. Getting to a specific column in a line, I typically use wbe^0$ and put modifiers in front of w, b, or e if I'm skipping through several words. And there is also the shifted versions, WBE which also come in handy often.
I have to admit that I often use the arrow keys for specific movement in vim.
I rarely use hjkl. However, I find that most of my navigation is done with other commands such as w (skip a word forward), b (skip a word backwards). Combine this with modifiers such as 3w (3 words forward). : skip to a specific line.
I've never really had to abandon the mouse since I never really started with it. All I can say is that attempting to use editors without all the keyboard shortcuts that vim has can feel quite painful.
I'd run vimtutor from the command line (Terminal.app in OS X). It runs vim with a tutorial document. That document was what really made me realize the power of some of the commands. You'll pick up some that are most useful to you and gain more over time. Eventually you'll find yourself using the mouse less and less.
One command that will really improve your movement speeds is f. f plus a character will jump to the first occurrence of that character on the current line. Pressing ; will jump to the next occurrence. Of course this can be used in combination with other commands. So, for example, removing all characters up to and including the first closing parenthesis is achieved by pressing d+f+).
You can seriously revolve your life around jk in hjkl.
nnoremap <c-k> ddkP "move current line up one
nnoremap <c-j> ddp "move current line down one
vnoremap <c-j> dp'[V'] "move visual block down one
vnoremap <c-k> dkP'[V'] "move visual block up one
"These may be a bit more esoteric to me"
inoremap jj <esc>o "Insert mode can move to next line (works mid line)
inoremap kk <esc>O "Insert mode new line on previous line
also for the desktop gui (ion3 and gnome)
winj - next window
wink - prev window
(This beats alttab if your editing in vim all day)
also read :he motion.txt in its entirety using j and k to scroll up and down as you do.
I learned vi so for me the mouse has never been something to use with a text editor.
I don't use hjkl except when the machine/network/keyboard/whatever-in-between is not comfortably configured.
Use the mouse where it makes sense. It often does (copy/paste to and from other gui applications).
To answer your question, though: Once you start using vim as a tool for transforming text bits with macros, the movements will all start to fall into place ;)
I think you're wondering if there's a quick way to move around while in insert mode (without using the mouse or arrow keys) but unfortunately there isn't; you have to escape out of insert mode. However I know that jumping all the way to your Esc key can be really annoying, which is why I've gotten into the habit of escaping with Ctrl+c, it's much faster.
I almost never use hjkl because it's too tedious. I usually try to jump right to where I want to go. There's a great cheat sheet out there (a Dvorak version is a available also (although it's in PDF)) that you can stare at and imagine the possibilities.
Mostly I use f, F, t, and T, and sometimes they're enhanced by typing a number up front like d2t) will delete up to the second close paren. Sometimes I use search. A lot of the time I use w, W, b, B, e, and E. They're all fantastic.
When I see vim users arrowing all over the place in visual mode just to delete text it makes me shudder, because there are so much easier ways (and hjkl only make you move your arm less, they don't change the number of button presses).
Something I did that I don't know if it's common or not is remapped my arrow keys to be <Esc><Up> and so on. For whatever reason I started out always arrowing around and assuming I'd be back in normal mode, so I just made it do that...
The biggest bummer about Vim is that now when I edit anything anywhere else I hit escape all of the time and type :w after every change...
I've noticed that gq does not work when I paste in a long line. For example, with a textwidth=72 and formatoptions=tcroqbnl, gq refuses to wrap this (in insert mode, I pasted the entire label contents, and then exited insert mode with ESC):
<label for="contact_reason_1">To get assistance with or to confirm a tire replacement recommendation</label>
If I add a line break in (after "to", for example), it'll wrap then. The funny thing is if I join the line back together, it'll happily wrap it again. So VIM seems to somehow be remembering "oh, this is one paste, don't wrap it".
How do I turn that feature off? I'd like gq in command mode to always work. Taking l out of formatoptions did not seem to help (and it shouldn't, this isn't insert mode).
clarification
Yes, I'm using a motion command, in particular, gq<Right>. formatexpr and formatprog are both unset. If it matters, this is in gvim on Debian GNU/Linux, vim version 7.2p284.
steps to reproduce
Pop up gvim on an open file.
Press i to get into insert mode, then type This is a long line. A long line. But not wrappable yet. Or yet. Soon.
Press ESC, then I. Type Now putting text in front of the long line. note: there is a space after the final period, can't get SO to show it, except when this note is here. FUN.
Press ESC, then A. Type And some after. note: space before the And, same SO problem.
Press ESC one last time. Now try gq<Left>, note it only wraps And some after.; I can't get vim to wrap the rest of the line (without going into insert mode and doing a line break by hand, then it works).
Fixing this state is doable; putting a newline after "now" and then hitting undo makes line wrap work again. WTF.
gq isn't enough to wrap the text. You have to give it a motion over which to wrap (like gqj) or tell it to wrap the current line with gqq. Are you sure you're not just mistyping it?
If you aren't, what are the formatexpr and formatprg options set to, if anything?
Update
The problem is the b setting in formatoptions. That's telling Vim to only wrap the text added during the last insertion.
I find that if I select the line before doing the gq, it works fine. Doesn't gq want to be combined with some text selection operation to work?
UPDATE
I confirm the bug. Running vim -u NONE, my formatoptions are vt.
Maybe Bram Molenar or at least the vim community would be interested?